RE: Tables, Wrappers and MLs, oh my!

I don't have time to write a full missive, obviously, but let me drop a point 
in here.  Fred's version is the "full-featured" version, which allows a lot of 
flexibility.  Even so, it's not complete, in that you can't assign an arbitrary 
formatter to a given cell in a given row.

Abstraction for abstraction's sake is not always the way to go.  What I try to 
do is think about what I want my application code to look like.  What I'd LIKE 
to do is the following:

DataSource source = new DataSource(--data source parameters--);
TableWidget widget = new TableWidget(source);
widget.setFormatter(new HTMLFormatter());   (or XMLFormatter)
out.println(widget.toML());

(or, for JSP:  session.putValue("widget", widget);)

In this case, my DataSource class needs to have certain methods that the 
TableWidget can use.  These might include getData and getFieldDefinitions 
(these would best be defined in a TableDataSource interface, but that's a 
different discussion).  This would be enough for a simple table, which would 
have headings and the same data in each row.  The formatting of the row would 
be based on the field definitions, while dynamic attributes (such as error and 
protect) would be part of the data from getData.

Too much abstraction can be as problematic as too little.

Joe




---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: "Stone, Brad V (TC)" <bvstone@taylorcorp.com>
Reply-To: JAVA400-L@midrange.com
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 15:30:47 -0600

>holy smokes!  

At first, OO programming sounded like more "theory" than reality.
Up until now it seemed like a "strong possibility".
Now it seems like "endless theory". :)

When I see all this, I have to ask, is it really worth it?  Why not do some
OO and some procedural programming?

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?  (I know Joe P's out for the
week).

- This post is purely rhetorical unless someone wishes to answer the above
questions.    This in no way is inteded to be a negative post, I'm just
thinking out loud.  

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